Why is Armageddon bad at retaining players?

"Most MUDs that have existed are dead" is a true statement, but there's quite a bit more nuance to the situation than that.

Many MUDs are or were unedited stock clones of some code base. There are more MUDs than one would think that didn't even change the name of their starting city from Midgaard to something else, for example.

Many MUDs start up and don't even get players. They die on arrival due to lack of exposure or because they were just made for a few friends, but somehow ended up on a MUD listing.

Many MUDs start up and are riding high until staff start to pull back from it out of lack of interest. Then the players leave because there's nothing new left and no staff oversight.

A few MUDs are actually increasing in players. Sindome, for example, grew massively over the past 10 years. Although Arx isn't on Mudstats, it's been growing too. These are games quite similar to Armageddon in roleplaying scope, yet they're growing and Armageddon is shrinking. 

Armageddon falls into a weird niche in the world of declining MUDs. Its decline can't quite be explained by any one factor, such as a general lack of interest in MUDs. That matters, for sure. Armageddon is quite exclusionary to the point that players defend its poor design and newbie-unfriendliness because "you either survive it or you don't". That matters too, when discussing Armageddon's position. Armageddon effectively has more people working on it than the vast majority of MUDs, in terms of staff, player helpers, builders, and players volunteering for leadership roles or publicity positions, that one must wonder where all that work is going when the game is shrinking by an average of 12 players a year for the past 5 years.

It's not a big surprise that people who decide to give the game an eighteenth chance do so by fully embracing its principles. It's the only way you can justify it: pretend that bygones are bygones and things may be better now. We've seen ample examples of staff's attitude of "you're either with us or against us," so if you find yourself in a time of your life when you want to see if Arm has turned a new leaf, you kind of have to follow suit. They make you do that. I wouldn't be surprised if someone gave Delerak the trademark derpboards speech. He probably promised that such vices are behind him and he's a new man. Personally, I never felt he had much to offer beyond ancient grudges against Sanvean and Bhagharva, so I'm not surprised if he took his vow of penance. He's a bit of a legend because he was one of the original rebels, but not because he had any credibility. Has he ever had anything insightful to say? He's a fair-weather fan, following the latest bandwagon. Right now he's on one side, next year he's on the other.

If you want to see if Armageddon has improved since your last stint, you should do that. By all means. Maybe it has. Anytime I commentate on the game, I have to temper my own opinions against the fact that I haven't actually played for the better part of a year. Sometimes I make a new character and sometimes I do so during a good month when something's going on. What invariably happens, unfortunately, is that I find that this was an exception to the rule. By and large, things have not improved to the point where I can respect the game. If you can live with that, more power to you. But what you cannot do, what you don't have the right to do, is become dishonest about things for self-serving reasons. If you find yourself lying about reality in order to justify your efforts to give the game another shot, you've become what you were once against.

This is what has happened to people like Delerak and Kronibas, and a few others who used to contribute to the running commentary of ArmageddonMUD but gave it up because, for all its faults, it remains the only really active RPI, and eating a bad meal in silence is easier than remarking on the quality of the food and subsequently finding your plate empty. If you can stomach the menu, have at it. This community is belligerent and unreasonable at times, and if any RP is better for you than none, you shouldn't listen. What deserves no respect is when someone ignores recent issues because it buys them goodwill with the staff. This is how recent issues become permanent issues. This is how Armageddon remains, year after year, a game where fuck-all happens and too few people speak up against the problems plaguing the game. I would love for it to once more become a game I could play with self-respect, but I'm not going to ignore what's wrong in order to convince myself it has become such a thing. Some will, some won't.

Noone's here because they've lost interest in Armageddon. Everyone's here for one of three reasons: you want to find out some code secrets, you want to debate what's wrong or right with the game, or you want to whitewash the game. The majority of visitors belongs to the first category, but you never hear from them--this is why any new post has 5-10 "currently viewing" but few replies. The latter category consists of shills like Qwerty. The middle portion is what sustains this community, and it's sad to see people move from there to #1 or #3 without any of the changes that would warrant such a shift of opinion. I guess sometimes the addiction kicks in and you'd rather eat shit while smiling.

There's also not just one game within Armageddon. There's MANY games in there.

You can play the social game, or the hack and slash game, the city game, the wilderness survival game ... there's a lot of games in there.

I did poorly in the social game because it requires a lot of staff interaction ... and that didn't go well for me. But it goes well for other people. I do okay at the criminal game and I'm good at the wilderness survival game. If I play that then Armageddon is fun for me.

The problem with being a newbie is that you can't see the multiple games within Armageddon. I bounced off the game 3-4 times when I first tried it before something finally stuck. There was a character named Aenvir who sort of took me under his wing and let me see a little bit of the wilderness world and I got hooked.

The only game I played was the social/political one.

I wanted to play the code aka hack and slash, I just can't be one of those, it's boring. Plus coming from hack and slash n,n,n,n,n,w,d,get all corpse, sacrifice corpse, wear all land I loathe thinking about every detail of every action to describe it to watchers. That's not a game I wanna play anymore.

I wanted to play the wilderness but you have to be good at the code to survive the wilderness.

You don't need staff interaction for shit if you don't want it. Look at that absurdly long lived twink who died recently. 

It's not just about karma, ShaLeah. Karma is one aspect of it, but even if you disregard that, your presence in the game is essentially meaningless if you're not involved with the one thing that staff cares about this quarter of the year. Outside of that bubble, nothing is relevant at all. It's just a bunch of meaningless bullshit because nobody supports it.

Now, if the game had some semblance of actual story...

and tbh arm doesn't do any of them particularly well. any of the 'subgames' that people play can be found elsewhere and done better.

social game? go play a mush that actually cares about it.

hack and slash? diablo, PoE, or any MMORPG. tons of games with more interesting systems.

survival? there's ark, conan exiles, rust, the forest, etc and many of those feature roleplaying servers.